He pushes the words out like they’re supposed to hit me with logic, but all I hear is the crack in his tone when he says family.
His pacing resumes, back and forth. “In eleven months we’re out. We’ll have our inheritance. Our freedom. We can walk away from all of this and never look back, and we can pay for a damn good therapist.”
The word inheritance drags like barbed wire through my chest and my lips tighten into a thin line. We’re no better than our uncle profiting directly off of Briar’s captivity, allowing this to happen just to receive our own payoff.
You don’t need to hold the weapon. You’re already guilty, standing there and letting him do it.
Her words have plagued me every single night as I rest my head on my pillow, knowing she’s on a cold, hard floor, fighting with every moment to heal before she’s torn apart all over again.
Elias stops again, pivoting toward me to keep on with his rant, like he can sense that his words aren’t working on me. “You know what that money means. It’s our way out. Our chance at a life we actually want. That’s what Mom would’ve wanted for us and we promised her to chase our dreams at her burial. Don’t you dare forget that.”
His voice cracks on the last line, and I see the flicker of the boy who held my hand at our mother’s grave, the boy who shoved his grief down deep because he thought he had to protect me from drowning in mine.
I want to scream back at him that maybe he’s the one forgetting who mom would want us to be.
My hands fist against my knees, nails biting hard into my palms, and the words tear out before I can cage them.
“Mom would never want us to be complicit in this!” I shout, pushing to my feet. “And Dante already told us this isn’t an option, Eli. You just don’t want to believe it because you need that promise dangling in front of you to make yourself sleep better at night.”
Elias stiffens mid-step, jaw snapping tight, but I don’t give him the chance to cut me off. My voice climbs, ragged and raw, weeks of silence and guilt cracking open all at once.
“And what aboutherfamily?” I demand, closing the distance between us until I’m staring into his eyes. “What do you think they wanted for her? Because I can fucking guarantee it’s not this. It’s not her ribs snapping and puncturing her lungs. It’s not her bones breaking over and over again, her skin shredded just for our uncle to watch it stitch itself back together.” My throat burns, but I don’t stop. “It’s not him finding new ways to destroy her every single day while we stand there and do nothing.”
The words echo too loud in the suite, bouncing back at us in the silence that follows. My fists shake at my sides, and my breath scrapes through my chest like glass. I don’t realize until I see the way Elias’s eyes flicker with a concern that there are tears streaking down my face, hot and silent.
I don’t bother trying to wipe them away. More would replace them.
“She’s not our family to worry about, Cal,” Elias murmurs. “She’s not Mom. She’s not you. She’s not anyone I swore to protect, and if you keep charging down this path, you’re going to get yourself killed for her, and I’mnotburying you too.”
His chest heaves as the words fall from him in a rush, and for a moment the only sound between us is the ragged pull of our breaths.
“Don’t you get it?” My voice comes out pinched from the emotion clogging my throat. “My soul is rotting here, Eli. Every single day we stand there and do nothing, it eats me alive. I feel it tearing me apart. I can’t watch anymore. I can’t stand there and pretend it doesn’t matter just because it’s not you or me strapped to that table.”
I shove at his chest, not to hurt him, but to force him to feel the fury building in me. “You think this is survival? What we’re doing is no better than standing by and watching our uncle do worse to Briar than what that vampire did to Mom the night she died. Let that sink in. This isn’t fucking vengeance.”
My voice cracks, breaking like glass. “I can’t, Eli. I can’t keep watching him do this to her.”
He flinches, my words hitting their mark whether he wants them to or not.
“She’s still the girl who ran from her family to chase her dreams,” I whisper hoarsely, shoulders shaking. “The same way we wanted to. And if she can fight for that still, even strapped down and bleeding out, then maybe we can too. Maybe we can all break out of this place and finally live our lives far away from this hell.”
Elias stares at me like I’ve shocked him to his core. His mouth opens, shuts, then opens again, words tangling uselessly on his tongue.
“You…” He shakes his head, pacing back a step, then forward again like his body can’t decide which way to run. His hands lift, fall, clench, open. His composure fractures right in front of me. “You can’t…Cal, you can’t talk like that. You don’t just want to escape. You want to take herwithus?”
My chest heaves, and the sound of my deep sigh is answer enough, even before I nod in confirmation.
Elias splutters again. “Jesus Christ, I–” He cuts himself off, dragging a hand over his mouth as if he can shove the rest of the words back down. But his eyes are wide and frantic, the last threads of his control slipping.
It’s the most undone I’ve seen him since the night we buried Mom. Back then, he carried both of us through it by sheer force of will, locking his grief down so tight I thought he’d sealed it off forever. Seeing him splinter now, because of me, is like watching the one pillar I’ve leaned on all my life start to sway.
“If you break, what the hell am I supposed to hold us together with over the next eleven months?” Elias says hoarsely, almost accusing, his voice fraying at the edges. “I don’t have the fight in me anymore, Callum.”
Still, he’s clinging to the hope that our uncle will just hold the door open for us to leave willingly at the end of the year.
“There’s nothing you can hold me together with in this place, Eli.” I whisper, my voice cracking as I press on. “Every day we stand there, every scream I hear, every fucking bone that snaps…I feel it hollowing me out. You don’t get it. I’m already dying in here.”
Elias flinches like I’ve physically struck him and I press on.
